The Writer's Unique Plight

Status
Not open for further replies.

Travis J. Smith

Witty User Title.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
333
Reaction score
28
This felt a tad too serious for the, "You know you're a writer when . . .," thread and, thus, I felt it was deserving of a separate thread.

Over the past week or two, one obsession, The Conduit (Wii FPS), has replaced my biggest, writing. While I enjoy getting headshots and the like online in The Conduit more than most things, I feel dreadfully hollow now that my WIP has sat, untouched, for at least a week.

So I got to asking myself this depressing question: "What am I if not a writer?" That got me to thinking about how I identify myself by my writing, in one way or another. In most situations, if I need to throw out a tasty tidbit about myself, the first thing that I spout out is, "I've written three novels."

Still, calling myself a writer doesn't feel completely right, although that is more of a defensive tactic to prevent people from bursting my fragile bubble with pointed words.

And what's worsened things is that I have encountered a minor backlog of ideas since I haven't been putting any to the page lately. I've outlined how I want to go at the revision of my WIP, I still have that fantasy novel of mine that got shelved after the first chapter in favor of revising a previous novel (my WIP), and then there are two distinct story ideas I've been mulling over. One's a fun, not-so-serious take on zombies. Another's, more or less, a mature, trippier version of that old cartoon, Chalk Zone, inspired by a dream.

Sure, I have other talents, and I am not exactly dimwitted, meaning there are other paths I could choose as far as academia and career are concerned, but I feel my time is wasted in other pursuits because that time could be spent writing. No matter if I'm struggling or blazing through my writing, I wouldn't have it any other way, even if I might be frustrated with it at the time.

Well, that became a bit of a personal rant of sorts, but I'm glad to get it out there. Say what you will/must.
 
Last edited:

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 9, 2005
Messages
16,768
Reaction score
4,663
Location
Scotland
You are a teenager - don't worry about this at all.

Live, then if later on you want to get back to writing, do it.

Have fun with whatever you happen to be doing.
 

Travis J. Smith

Witty User Title.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
333
Reaction score
28
It's not so much worry as it is an unavoidable feeling of unease and worthlessness when I'm not writing. Wanted to see if anyone else shared that feeling . . .

Oh, I also thought I'd say that I hate being called a teenager. :tongue I'm in college and I'll be 20 in January. Maybe it's just because I hate being grouped in with some of my peers . . . :Shrug:
 

popmuze

Last of a Dying Breed
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 31, 2005
Messages
2,597
Reaction score
181
Location
Nowhere, man
What this thing called The Conduit? I'm always looking for ways to fill my time other than writing--and I've published 13 books.
I was once into a baseball game called APBA. If someone were to tell me there's now an online version, I don't think I'd ever write again.
 

RG570

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 23, 2006
Messages
1,037
Reaction score
105
Location
British Columbia
Jeez, I wish I could mention my writing to people without feeling dirty.

Even when I submit to people who actually ask for it, it feels like I have to wash my hands afterward.

Seems pretty simple to me, though. Ditch the video games. Get some discipline. Set targets and fulfill them. It doesn't get much easier than that.

I get vague anxiety when I haven't written for a long time, but since I'm also a fitness junkie, I get a lot of it out through that. For sure, there's a relief in getting back to it after not doing it for a while. It's normal.
 

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 9, 2005
Messages
16,768
Reaction score
4,663
Location
Scotland
My apologies, Travis. Put it another way -the world's not going to come to an end if you stop writing for a spell.

Why on earth anyone feels worthlessness when they aren't writing beats me.

I haven't written anything for months. And I love games, too.


Unavoidable? Hmmm.


It's not so much worry as it is an unavoidable feeling of unease and worthlessness when I'm not writing. Wanted to see if anyone else shared that feeling . . .

Oh, I also thought I'd say that I hate being called a teenager. :tongue I'm in college and I'll be 20 in January. Maybe it's just because I hate being grouped in with some of my peers . . . :Shrug:
 

Travis J. Smith

Witty User Title.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
333
Reaction score
28
Jeez, I wish I could mention my writing to people without feeling dirty.
Exactly why I only mention that I've written novels, avoiding specifics unless my hand is forced.

RG570 said:
Seems pretty simple to me, though. Ditch the video games. Get some discipline. Set targets and fulfill them. It doesn't get much easier than that.
See, that's what's odd about all of this: I was the picture of discipline when I started writing seriously. My 11th grade Honors English teacher went so far as to call me prolific (in terms of writing output, not quality :tongue ).

But, lately, this laziness of sort has come to encompass a lot of my life. In all my life, I have only accrued overdue fines from the library (school or public) twice that I can recall, and both times were a result of not being able to find the time to walk there. Now, however, I have a book that is two weeks overdue and that I haven't even read half of; the library is running a fine free "happy hour" (exactly as they put it) every Thursday from 5-6 PM, so that enabled my procrastination a little, and the story hasn't exactly gripped me yet, but it is unlike me to take so long to will myself to read a book or to decide that it isn't worth reading.

However, I am happy to say that I am forcing myself to get back to things as usual. Now that I am able to keep my earbuds in my ear while jogging, I have started to go jogging again when it's not raining. I rewrote the excerpt I edited recently and posted on the SYW board. That book I talked about will be read by next Thursday, or I will decide it isn't my type of book and return it next Thursday during the fine free "happy hour." There are other things I am doing, but those are the most notable ones.

And you cannot imagine the relief when I got back to writing today. For how long I've gone without writing, I was not all that rusty. :hooray:

Bufty: I do not feel entirely worthless, but when you consider your writing to be the one thing you can contribute to society and you go without doing it for so long it's kind of like losing your identity. I didn't feel like myself. I am naturally a hard worker that does what he puts his mind to, and so to do so little in the past couple weeks was unsettling.

Also, though it wasn't a dry spell complete with writer's block, it felt a lot like that. I kept telling myself I was going to write, but never could make myself get around to it during those weeks, so it was similar to writer's block for me. I was worried I'd lost it. Whatever it is.

Oh yeah. I didn't mean that I have to be writing every second of the day to avoid being depressed, or anything such as that. Just that I feel a lot better about where I stand when I am making headway in terms of writing on a daily basis, even that progress took hours of struggling and I only managed a couple hundred words.
 
Last edited:

Ryan David Jahn

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 25, 2009
Messages
186
Reaction score
28
Location
Louisville.
Website
ryandavidjahn.com
I don't think there's anything wrong with not writing for a spell. Sometimes you need to recharge your batteries. That's okay. The solution is not necessarily to force yourself to write; it might be to give yourself permission to not write.

I tend toward prolificity myself, but when I was twenty, maybe twenty-one, I went a year without writing anything. This, after having written three novels and twenty-five or thirty short stories in the four years before that. And I still go a month here and a month there. In fact, I haven't written any fiction since I finished my last novel a month ago. But it was my second novel in the last year; I need a short break before the next project.

Sometimes time away from the keyboard is exactly what you need. I don't think it's necessarily anything to feel guilty about.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Aug 7, 2005
Messages
47,985
Reaction score
13,245
We all need to recharge our batteries sometimes. And I think it says a lot that you feel bad about not writing. IMO that shows you plan to get back to it someday. Just not quite yet, and that's fine.
 

Travis J. Smith

Witty User Title.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
333
Reaction score
28
Ryan and Scarlet, I think I was unintentionally recharging my batteries. :tongue

Draft after draft of the opening of my WIP, whether it be the prologue, or the first chapter, has tanked on SYW and I was growing a bit weary of it all then. I'd made strides, but just hadn't gotten that positive response I wanted to convince me that I can do this and drive me to write the rest.

And it's always good to let something sit, then look at it later with fresh eyes, right? In this case, after that opening festered for a couple weeks, I was able to pare it down, murder my darlings, and factor out a lot of my wordiness. Even managed to make myself giggle in the case of one line. Took a break after that, though, because I don't want to do too much too soon.

I then rewarded myself with some online matches in The Conduit. Had 33 kills and only 11 deaths in my last match. That's a 3:1 ratio. 22 more kills than deaths~! :hooray: :partyguy: Think getting back to writing, among other things, has calmed me, and that calming effect even helped my performance in The Conduit. :tongue

EDIT: If I had more money for video games, I'd probably buy the latest Harry Potter game for the Wii, Christine. If only to explore Hogwarts.
 

M.R.J. Le Blanc

aka Sadistic Mistress Mi-chan
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 26, 2008
Messages
2,195
Reaction score
271
Location
At the computer
Sometimes having an overindundated mind (yeah I don't care if that's actually a word or not :p ) only makes the problem worse. Sometimes all it takes is forcing yourself to take a step back, relax and settle. Sometimes you gotta stop writing for a bit. I've had my moments where I've tried to quit writing altogether, obviously it's never stuck. I was a hormonal teenager at the time so I guess it's no surprise lol Really it's going to come down to what I tell all my NaNo newbies every October: find what works for you. When you find that process that works, everything just falls into place. I'm a lot like you, I've always got a few ideas running around in my head (at least). My mind is fluid, it has a hard time focusing solely on one story. So I end up bouncing between a few stories at a time, and that works for me. If I run out of steam with one, or I suddenly get a great scene idea for another that just won't go away I give myself permission to bounce to another story. Sometimes it's just to get something out, sometimes I work on it for days. But it works for me, I'm happy with the progress I make. As to new story ideas that pop up along the way, I keep a notebook that's full of story summaries. Whenever I get a new one I write down a basic summary of it in my notebook and then put it aside. Unless I get an overwhelming urge to start the story, writing out that summary is enough and I can focus back on the stories I'm working on.
 

Travis J. Smith

Witty User Title.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
333
Reaction score
28
MRJ, writing these ideas down once they move from a vague idea to something I can work with is, more often than not, all that's necessary for me to get them off my mind, more or less. It's inevitable that I'll end up thinking up more things for the story idea along the way, but I can maintain my focus on the story at hand without much difficulty.

Inspiration only bothered me this time around because, while I had no lack of inspiration, I wasn't doing anything about it at the time. It was begging to come out, but I just wasn't letting it out to play.

I have no shortage of things I could work on, what with all the story ideas and all the early drafts sitting around asking to be edited. Whenever I happen to finish my WIP, it won't be long before I'm onto something else.
 

Mad Queen

California Mountain Snake
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 5, 2008
Messages
676
Reaction score
122
If you write a little every day, even if it's just a paragraph, or revise a scene, or just think about your plot and take notes, you'll feel productive again and still have lots of time to play that videogame.
 

Travis J. Smith

Witty User Title.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
333
Reaction score
28
Mad Queen, have you been productive enough to let me read some of your work yet? :D
 

Mad Queen

California Mountain Snake
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 5, 2008
Messages
676
Reaction score
122
Mad Queen, have you been productive enough to let me read some of your work yet? :D
I like you too much to expose you to my current writing. When it gets better (ie when I can neutralise its mutagenic effect), I'll send you a message.
 
Last edited:

Travis J. Smith

Witty User Title.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
333
Reaction score
28
I like you too much to expose you to my current writing. When it gets better (ie when I can neutralise its mutagenic effect), I'll send you a message.

Mutagenic, eh? I learned a new word today~! ;)

I think I might send you an excerpt of my first novel for your enjoyment (you'll think it's a laugh riot) to see if I can get you not to react as adversely to the idea of sending me some of your work. :tongue
 

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 6, 2008
Messages
13,979
Reaction score
1,533
Location
Wisconsin's (sore) thumb
Website
www.firefromthesky.org
It's perfectly all right to let writing take a back seat now and then. As one of my characters has observed, "One obsession at a time was plenty for anyone." I have been through many obsessions and cycles of obsession. When I was pushing twenty, the mad ride had only just begun.
 

CalGrave

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 27, 2007
Messages
112
Reaction score
4
Location
California
You know it's funny, most sites I see suggest STOP WATCHING THAT EVIL TELEVISION AND VIDEO GAMES AND WRITE. But I know that if it were not for a game I played almost 5 years ago I wouldn't have my current idea. If I didn't have my current idea I wouldn't be writing at all. Sometimes inspiration can come from taking a break.
 

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 9, 2005
Messages
16,768
Reaction score
4,663
Location
Scotland
250 words a day adds up to over 91,000 words a year.

Write nothing for a week and in 1800 words you're back to par again.

And I don't exactly reagard my writing as being a 'contribution to society'.
 

Ken

Banned
Kind Benefactor
Joined
Dec 28, 2007
Messages
11,478
Reaction score
6,198
Location
AW. A very nice place!
... stop writing; start marketing. If you've completed 3 novels you should be sub'ing them or revising them if they're not yet ready. Have you had anyone look them over, here? G'luck.
 

Libbie

Worst song played on ugliest guitar
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
5,309
Reaction score
1,094
Location
umber and black Humberland
It's not so much worry as it is an unavoidable feeling of unease and worthlessness when I'm not writing. Wanted to see if anyone else shared that feeling . . .

Oh, I also thought I'd say that I hate being called a teenager. :tongue I'm in college and I'll be 20 in January. Maybe it's just because I hate being grouped in with some of my peers . . . :Shrug:


It's not good to let yourself develop a sense of unease or worthlessness. This kind of thing will only make you unpleasant to be around, for others as well as for yourself.

If you want to feel like you're working on your writing even when you can't physically write, keep a small notebook with you and jot down notes. Or make a habit of thinking about your works in progress often throughout the day. I have a job where I rarely have to talk to others and where I only need to pay attention when I'm shifting animals. It gives me nearly eight hours to "work" on my books, in the form of thinking about them, running scenes through my head like movies, and getting familiar with my characters. In that way, I am "writing" nearly all the time. (And, as a bonus, thinking about my books makes cleaning up poo a lot more bearable.) Maybe you need to develop a similar process so that your attitude about yourself can improve. You'll write better when you feel confidence in and appreciation for your own work, believe me. You'll take more risks with it and you'll feel happier with what you produce.

Don't fall too far into the trap of thinking, "I'm young and I've got plenty of time to write." I did that throughout my late teen years and much of my twenties, and as a consequence I pissed away nearly a decade without accomplishing much. I'm making up for lost time now. It's hard.

Carson McCullers wrote The Heart is a Lonely Hunter when she was twenty. There's no reason why you can't do that, too.

So yeah, recharge your batteries as needed, for sure. I just took a few days off writing so I could do that. But don't do it for too long. And retrain yourself to have confidence in your writing, so that you feel great when you're doing it and when you're not, too.
 
Last edited:

Travis J. Smith

Witty User Title.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
333
Reaction score
28
... stop writing; start marketing. If you've completed 3 novels you should be sub'ing them or revising them if they're not yet ready. Have you had anyone look them over, here? G'luck.
:ROFL: :roll: :ROFL:

Sorry, even throwing out the bolded as a possibility, even in a, "If not this, then this," sentence, still makes me break into gales of laughter.

One is my first novel, which I only keep around as evidence that I have, indeed improved. Another is my work in progress, which I just began an extensive rewrite on and am putting so much time and effort into (been my focus for the better part of a year or two) because I feel it has the most potential of everything I've written. The last is a novel I only have a first draft of which is terribly rough and I was inundated with thoughts of, "I should've done that instead of that," not long after finishing it, so it'll be subjected to an extensive rewrite itself whenever I happen to get to it.

Autumn and The Fall, the aforementioned work in progress, has been revised, rewritten, etc. and various excerpts of its varying forms have been seen on varying SYW boards (genre's changed twice). That's a lot of variation. :tongue I've spent as much time in the revising stage on this novel as some less prolific writers spend writing one. :Shrug:

Oh, and Bufty, I'd like to think that all this work would result in me contributing something to society in the end that it would appreciate and feel I hadn't wasted my time on. It's just wishful thinking.
 

Ken

Banned
Kind Benefactor
Joined
Dec 28, 2007
Messages
11,478
Reaction score
6,198
Location
AW. A very nice place!
... I fail to see the humor here Travis. Now go to your room, and no dinner for you tonight! :)

ps Sounds like you're doing fine with the writing and revising, TJS.
Keep up the good work ... opps too declarative.
Let me rephase that:
You may just possibly want to keep up the good work if it would be suitable to yourself at this point in time. Better?

;-)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.